Quotes About Writing

Writing, for me, is very inspiration-dependent. And inspiration can be a jerk.

When I'm writing, quite often I start having a good time when I see there's a chance to make myself look like a real jerk. I start chuckling and having an interesting, rather than a boring, time.

I think it's Jerry's masterful fiction writing.

I'm the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction.

I always wanted to write a history of Jerusalem.

Writing about Jerusalem can be such a minefield.

Around A.D. 930, the sages in Tiberias assembled all 24 holy books and completed the writing of the codex, the first definitive Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible. From Tiberias, the codex was taken to Jerusalem.

I consider myself a Jewish writer - even if my characters frequently are not Jewish - in the same way, I guess, that I consider myself a Jewish man, even though I don't often attend shul.

I find it very hard to write about Jewish history.

I've always felt as much outside the Jewish experience as in it. It astonished my family that I wrote about things Jewish.

I don't consider myself a Jewish writer.

Jim Murray's greatest writings were golf writings.

Jimmy McGovern - I love his writing, and I'm a big fan of him and Alan Clarke.

Sure, I'll have characters drop in and out of books but the main cast of characters always changes. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if had the same joe detective guy or gal, I wouldn't write them as well; I wouldn't do as good a job.

When you write fiction, there were things about Washington that I've experienced and wanted to write about, including the swamping nature of it, the compromises people come to town and are forced to make, and also, when writing about Joe McCarthy, the indecency and lies that he put forward that people didn't take a stand about.

What I said about John was that he liberated me from my anxieties about writing in a correct, acceptable way.

Fortunately, John Houseman is a marvelous writer and he sat in on so many story conferences. He worked with Welles, you know, and he's a marvelous man.

The learned are not agreed as to the time when the Gospel of John was written; some dating it as early as the year 68, others as late as the year 98; but it is generally conceded to have been written after all the others.

The hard part about writing about a guy like John Brown is that he was so serious, and his cause was so serious, that most of what's been written about him is really serious and, in my opinion, a little bit boring.

In the early 2000s, I started selling some short stories to horror markets. I joined the Horror Writers Association.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It's just a matter of joining the dots.

Everybody I know is a joke writer.

Writing comedy is an exposing thing because you're putting yourself on the line with every joke you write, and although you can't second-guess an audience, if you want to be successful, you have to write stuff people like.

'30 Rock' is probably one of my favorite shows. It's just joke after joke after joke.